Knowing
by cheese on Toast
Summary: It's like, the more free time he gets the emptier he begins to feel.


(Sadly, I don't own Naruto.)

_it's like, the more free time he gets the emptier he begins to Feel. _

* * *

There are many things he knows, despite the fact that he wishes he didn't. There are certain things he remembers and wishes he didn't, and certain things he doesn't remember and wishes he did.

Though, the latter isn't really much, because he has a surprisingly spectacular memory. Maybe that's why he turned out the way he did. Or was it the fact that he was always pushed aside?

Also, who knew that 'pushed' was actually an adjective? Oh, the confines and freedom of the English language.

For one thing, he knows that there actually _is _a clear distinction between hating someone and wishing for them to die. For one thing, if wishes ever worked, heck, he would have killed off half the population by now. But, anyways, hating someone was just hating someone. Striving to get better then them because they were some kind of rival or something like that. But wishing for them to die- did that mean that he had a sort of death wish himself? Like, if he didn't succeed, there'd be nothing? Heck, he already had nothing, there was nothing left to gain or lose. Wishing someone to die was wishing someone to die with your entire heart- and you'd stop at nothing until you achieved that goal.

Yes, he knows as well, most certainly, that that was probably one of his downfalls as well.

Secondly, he knows that, no matter how damn hard he may try, there is just no way to get the picture of that one person to quit infiltrating his mind, like one of those messed-up psycho movies in which everything seems to go wrong and the main character is some demented mental patient who can't let go of the past.

And then, he realizes that, yes, he probably _is _this demented-mental-patient-who-can't-let-go-of-the-past kind of character, and that, yes, he probably is going nuts by admitting this (or was it really himself admitting this? Was someone poisoning his tea, trying to drive him nuts? No, if he was talking to himself, he already was nuts), and the fact that he believes people when they pull the line 'admittance-is-the-first-step-in-the-right-direction' truly proves his craziness.

It was sort of weird, he realizes, because he was just now coming to the conclusion that he feels as if he's being pressed from all sides around him and suffocating. After living where he has been for a couple of years now, the realization just dawning upon him is really sort of saddening.

In the process, he realizes that it's not a particularly pleasing feeling, like he always thought it must be (for odd reasons that he has yet to comprehend- do you have a problem with this? Lady in the second row, you do? Well, screw you to heck, then, and may you live a horrible wretched life from now on), because it reminds him of that one single person who decided to rip his life apart.

If Itachi hadn't gone crazy, would the world still be the same? Would he still be here right now, laying on his bed, staring up at a ceiling that never changes in a room that never changes in a village that never changes in a world that never changes? Will all this non-changing crap that goes on anyways, he really doesn't think that the world would change. He was probably born a certain way. It's like the whole way he came out of his mother or something. Feet first. They say that's rarer. Maybe that's what made him so damn emotionless and having such a thirst for power. It's like, even if Itachi hadn't killed anyone, it was the way he'd been born, with his weird self, and there was no way to change that.

Change turned out be a verb, by the way. Yet again, oh, how the English language is so weird at times….

The third thing he remembers are those ties. Those people around him were liars, yes, yes, they were just downright damn crappy liars. They told him that bonds do not hurt. So, why is it that when he looks back on all of those stupid ties and bonds that he still, very, extremely faintly remembers, they still hurt, piercing straight through his chest like his sword and puncturing his heart. Like, his own sort of weird self-infliction of pain.

"Self-pain-infliction, even mental, isn't good, you know."

"I don't give a frickin' damn about that."

"You should."

"Bite me, Kabuto, and let's see where this conversation turns to."

He also remembers his mother telling him how that, sometimes, even when people are being unkind, he shouldn't lose hope and always be kind and gentle just as well.

Well, screw her, she was dead, she didn't care, and he didn't give a damn about her and her stupid advice. He would be as rude and sarcastic and horrible and sadistic as possible with his acrimonious self as much as he liked to, and he didn't really care at all how it hurt other people.

It was just his nature. How he was born. How he was born with his weird-self-and-there-was-no-way-of-changing-it.

He got scared when people open doors, he remembers, and he still goes now. He was afraid that someone would come in and push him down even more- and, in a sense, he still sort of is. He's scared that someone will come in and shove him down even more. Push him down. Take away everything he holds dear- not like he has anything left, anyway, but if there was something left, he's afraid that they would. That'd they'd crush him even more- just like his brother and his father had. And then, trembling so hard he broke, crushed down into those tiny little miniscule pieces, his matter would do whatever the heck matter does, and he'd find himself in a future life as part of a desk or something. Yeah, that'd be how much he's scared of being crushed, scared of his inner feelings beyond his sadistic ness being found out. Yeah, just plain basically scared of someone being able to read him and his stupidity, his power, and his hate for once.

Speaking of matter, in physics, it is the material substance- the material substance of the universe that has mass, occupies space, and is convertible to energy.

Well, he's occupying space alright, yeah. Occupying space just because he has to. It's, like, what everyone is left to do if they don't find out a purpose in life. He's just someone to occupy space. A bookend. A stone statue that never moves its ugly, horrendous expression from its face. Like all they are going to do is be converted into energy and then reincarnated into something else (or as someone else and have just another extremely horrible life but he did not really want to think of that possibility right now.).

Is this how Naruto used to feel before he met him, and Sakura, and Kakashi, and Iruka?

Ah, no, dammit, feeling that someone actually needed him reminded him of those bonds and it hurt and he really didn't want to feel that right now. Above all, he didn't want to feel those bonds and how they hurt so badly that he wanted to die.

Then again, he's wanted to die many times over. Which brings him back to number one- wishing _himself _to be the one to die was _also _an entirely different matter.

But it was much like one of the other ones, because, if he had the power of wishes, then he'd have killed himself numerous times over by now and would not have made it to that extremely lovely- or so everyone seemed to say, but like he trusted those idiots of the world now- age of sixteen.

A long time ago, someone told him that seven was the age of reason. Thinking it over now, he comes to the conclusion that whoever the heck said that was right. Seven, at least for him, had most definitely been the age of reason. The age that his entire life was wrenched away from his fingertips and the once-tight grip he had upon it.

Seven was the age of reason, and, heck, he had sure been able to come to reason with a lot of things then, whether he wanted to or not.

Most of those things, he didn't really want to.

Trying to move on, he realizes that most of his thoughts can't really stray away from the same subject, so he sadly moves onto reason number five.

He doesn't like the number five. It was connected to too many other numbers. It was, say, the center pole or something for all numbers, and all numbers seemed to revolve at least somehow around the number five. Five was like the center of the universe.

Because he felt like most of the time people treated him like the number five, he does not like the number five. (Or the number four, for that matter, but, you know, that's an entirely different reason and eventually it will grow into a different number that he will hate more then the previous one.)

He always seemed to be the person that everyone always had their eyes glued to (like those stupid googly eyes Kabuto was always playing with when Orochimaru didn't want to talk to him- honestly, that guy is _weird _sometimes, but he already knew that from the past few years.), and, even though he had left all of that, it still feels like it. He remembers how he had always been the center of attention everywhere, always for various different reasons. His skills. His looks- even if he didn't really find himself all that fetching from his own personal thoughts and his actions, every single girl who had half a brain and could wrench one eye open seemed to sincerely think he was one of the greatest things ever, which he, after many years of experience with the opposite sex (whether or not it had involved killing them, that, um, didn't really matter all that much at the moment) _still _doesn't understand all that well. It seemed as if, everywhere he walked in that damn village, someone seemed to look at him with awe, or appreciation, or obsession. The last one was sincerely the scariest, especially because girls can run fast and there were a lot of dead-end alleyways the last time he checked in the Hidden Leaf Village. Everyone was always watching him for one reason or another- everyone was always staring at him for one reason or another- and they didn't even know a thing about him. They didn't understand him, and they never really had, and even know, he doubts severely that anyone will. Anyone who ever even _could _was long since dead.

Or, you know, had gone just totally nuts.

But he didn't like to think about his brother all that much nowadays, even if most of his thoughts revolved around him.

Sixthly, he'd like to point out that, yes, he _is _in fact straight. He would like to point this out just randomly, but it is important, because when Orochimaru is halfway across the house and a downright pedophile, you have to say these things just for the record.

The seventh thing he remembers with a deep pang of reluctance that stabs his chest quite quickly and suddenly, making him gasp, his eyes go wide. As his face sinks back to its normal blank, melancholy countenance, he remembers things that he can't stop, no matter how hard he tries.

He does not like subcategories. But he feels that he has to file these memories underneath the seventh thing, henceforth, it calls for subcategories. (He's not really all that sure on why he doesn't like subcategories, but it's probably because all the things he used to call Naruto fall underneath subcategories of the same type of meaning, and this just serves as another painful reminder of other things that he doesn't like just as well.)

He remembers his childhood. He doesn't really consider it a normal childhood, with the type of people his clan were. Not like he should really judge them. But he's biased, in a way, considering he and his brother are the only ones left, and he's tried so hard to block everyone else away that he barely remembers how they used to be, but he thinks that they were probably just a little bit weird. But nice all the same. But moving on.

He remembers how his mother liked to be philosophical. And he was just seven, so he lapped up her words like some pathetic little dog. And he was just seven, so he lapped up his brother's actions like some pathetic little dog as well. And he was just seven, he was just seven, he was just seven. He had no real sense of the world yet. He supposes that, even if seven is supposed to be the age of reason, his age of reason hadn't sunken in fully yet. He was just seven, so he accepted everything around him and let it effect him like fresh scars spreading fast with the remnants of wildfire over his heart.

Sadly, he remembers that this may have just been his downfall. Accepting everything without barely any questions- so, that when the time came for him to finally accept the truths of the world, it hit him like that ping pong ball Kabuto had accidentally aimed at his head once during one of Orochimaru's weird attempts to get him to actually get on at least slight good terms with Kabuto. (By the way, it hadn't really worked, because, since Kabuto nailed him in the head, he nailed him right back in the glasses.) The truth had finally been shoved onto him, whether or not he had actually wanted it to or not, and he was forced to accept it.

Now, he was forced to remember it. Whether or not he actually wanted to, he was forced to remember all the stupid things he had done. All the horrors he had lived through. All those horrible things he had said to everyone in his life- but, heck, we were through this, that was just sort of his nature.

Eighthly, as he stares up at that same, never-changing old ceiling once more, he remembers how much he misses them. That cheery, haunting call of his name that still occasionally popped up in his nightmares, and that warm, soft grip that always clung to his arm. Even if it was a bond, a tie, can he call it a bandana for lack of any other word and the fact that he has to puncture his insanity with, at least, _some _kind of humor, and it hurt, he missed it.

He also missed that annoying whine, that cheesy grin and laughter, that permanent glare that had seemingly been sewn onto his face. He even missed all of that, which, for him, was a new low. Or maybe he was just coming to his senses for once. Maybe he was just finally realizing the world.

Maybe he was just finally coming to terms with himself. Maybe he was just finally coming to realize that maybe it had all really been in vain.

No, don't think that. He shakes his head quickly. Think that, and it's like a death wish or something.

Oh, but, he already has one of those, too….

What will he do once he finally achieves his goal? Live even longer, but more emptier, with these eight realizations? Like some sort of weird hobo or something? At this, he actually scoffs. The mental picture he gets at that thought is just too funny to pass up at the current time, and laughter, being so scarce in this desolate, saddening place, was something he surprisingly wanted at the moment.

Maybe he won't do anything. Maybe he'll just sit and stare. Sit and stare at the never-changing world. Because, as he had recently just remembered, he was born like that, and the world just rarely ever changed.

Maybe he will just sit and stare, and realize the following facts.

Pushed is an adjective.

Changed is a verb.

And that are many things he knows, despite the fact that he wishes he didn't. And that there are certain things he remembers and wishes he didn't, and certain things he doesn't remember and wishes he did.

Sadly, the thing that isn't the latter is the thing that occurs more often.

And, no matter what the outcome, he's just going to have to sit and stare and live with it.


End file.
